Urban Land Magazine » Martin Zimmermanhttp://urbanland.uli.org
Tue, 03 Mar 2015 20:34:07 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.1In Print: Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Tradehttp://urbanland.uli.org/news/print-junkyard-planet-travels-billion-dollar/
http://urbanland.uli.org/news/print-junkyard-planet-travels-billion-dollar/#commentsMon, 12 May 2014 14:49:37 +0000http://urbanland.uli.org/?p=25242This book is a fascinating and entertaining account of a global industry that few people acknowledge and even fewer comprehend, and it is hard to imagine anyone with better qualifications than Adam Minter to explain how it works and assess where it is taking us.

Junkyard Planet is a fascinating and entertaining account of a global industry that few people acknowledge and even fewer comprehend, and it is hard to imagine anyone with better qualifications than Adam Minter to explain how it works and assess where it is taking us. As a self-professed environmentalist, Shanghai correspondent for Bloomberg World View, and third-generation product of a well-connected Minneapolis mom-and-pop scrapyard company, Minter takes the reader on an insider’s tour of what drives this $500 billion engine of raw capitalism. The author’s personalized account is fast-paced and often amusing, if not hilarious. But he also conveys sobering reminders of humankind at the brink.

The “Saudi Arabia of Scrap” is what he calls the United States, functioning as a go-to source with a scrap-metal sector employing 138,000 workers—everyone from sorters and crushers, to buyers, packers, and shippers. But America is basically an exporter of scrap; China is where the real action takes place. China’s growing cities, emerging urban middle class, and even the national push to expand the high-speed rail system are buttressed by a determination to make the most (profit) of others’ discards.

Take, for example, items as inauspicious as discarded electric motors. Taizhou, a city of 4.5 million not far from Shanghai, is the heart of China’s reuse industry, where millions of electric motors from the United States and other countries await a second (or third) life. On a tour of one of several vendors’ markets, Minter is told that what cannot be repaired and reused is disassembled to the base metals and melted. Taizhou is the headquarters for Chiho-Tiande Group, the world’s largest motor recycler with a listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Taizhou enjoys the highest per-capita car ownership rate in the country, largely because the Chinese car maker Geely (which bought Volvo for cash in 2010) has a large manufacturing presence there. Everything from bicycles to refrigerators is manufactured in Taizhou and then shipped—not to the United States, but to shopping malls in Shanghai or towns in west China.

Traveling further afield to Penang, Malaysia, Minter is escorted through the huge facilities of Net Peripheral, a computer monitor refurbishing corporation. Here he views thousands of arrivals from a Vermont-based source—which has provided more than 300,000 monitors in just four years. Workers at Net Peripheral clip, poke, solder, and refurbish monitors for resale in the Middle East and Africa.

Eye-popping mountains of hissing refuse, bales of Christmas tree lights, computers, auto chassis, and coils are stacked on ships, warehouses, and loading docks. They add up to something that is unquantifiable—the universal drive for the comforts afforded by greater prosperity. Herein lies one of Minter’s conundrums about supply and demand and a maxim on planetary morality: the wealthier a country becomes, the “less likely it is to embrace the thrifty practices of its developing stages.”

Minter is of two minds. As a capitalist and junkyard aficionado, Minter harbors strong sympathies with consumer-driven capitalism, while the environmentalist in him worries about the limits of free markets. His anxieties are candidly revealed in a chapter ironically titled “Ashes to Ashes, Junk to Junk.” The unalterable fact, he reminds the reader, is that all sorts of stuff cannot be recycled indefinitely. Moreover, some stuff cannot be recycled at all. He cites reliable statistical surveys to underscore another nasty fact: people everywhere have a proclivity to generate unnecessary waste, even when they know better. Bad habits are hard to change.

Unrelenting pressures to feed, clothe, house, transport, and entertain 7.2 billion humans bespeak of wrenching conflicts between worldwide aspirations and resource scarcity. A solution—if indeed there is one—can be found in the first word of the environmentalists’ credo: “reduce, reuse, and recycle.” As the author admonishes, “there’s always the alternative: stop buying so much crap in the first place.”

Granville Island’s Public Market in Vancouver, British Columbia, is open seven days a week year-round. (DIALOG)

An undated photo of Granville Island’s industrial past. (DIALOG)

In the early 1970s, Ron Basford, a Canadian Cabinet minister and loyal Vancouverite, seized on the idea of converting Granville Island—a modestly sized pancake barely a half mile (0.8 km) south of the emerging downtown—into a special place. Until the mid—20th century, the island had prospered as an industrial hotbed, jammed with shipyards, metal fabricators, wire rope manufacturers, and warehouses. But with the shift in the post–World War II economy away from industrial production, tenants departed, leaving the island derelict and the remaining structures vulnerable to arson.

Basford wanted the island to be owned, managed, and financed by the Canadian government. He also wanted to vest policy and creative thinking in the hands of the Granville Island Trust, a core of locally committed civic leaders and urban experts. He succeeded on both accounts.

The launch of the Granville Island Public Market in 1979 was the first in a succession of adaptive use projects meant to capture a distinct identity—a local identity—for the island’s revival. A sense of place has been central to the island’s subsequent success. The most recent figures (2009) show 85 percent of the island’s annual visits are from metro Vancouver, and almost half of those frequent the Public Market’s many vendors for their normal fresh food needs. Travel guides, on the other hand, continue to trumpet the 10 million total annual visits as proof that the island is Canada’s number-one tourist attraction. How to strike the right balance between these two user groups is the subject of ongoing debate.

Granville Island from above as it looks today showing the Public Market to the right of Granville Bridge. (DIALOG)

Granville was never intended to be a theme park or to mirror the festival marketplace brand. Nor was it intended to conform to a master plan. Change has been incremental, but deliberate. The island’s founding principles for redevelopment, design guidelines, desire for a broad diversity of activities, governance, and financing have all been based on the premise that place making take precedence over profit.

Redevelopment was initially financed by federal grants with no payback requirements, the main restriction being that the island not be allowed to operate at a deficit. In subsequent years, annual operating surpluses have generally been less than $1 million—sums reinvested in the island rather than deposited in the federal treasury. However, reinvestment in site upgrades and infrastructure has lagged in recent years, and several development sites remain underused.

The ongoing application of the island’s redesign is widely admired. Design guidelines and design review, as administered by architect Norm Hotson, are based on retaining the vernacular of gable-roofed sheds and corrugated-metal siding on once-gritty buildings. Industrial-scaled entries, on-site cranes, and even the original rail tracks remain in place as references to the site’s industrial heritage.

Traffic modes share the streetscape, but pedestrians are given priority in a design modeled after the Dutch woonerf. (DIALOG)

There are no sidewalks on Granville Island. The streetscape design is modeled loosely on the Dutch woonerf concept, in which the street functions as a social space, allowing slow-moving vehicles, cyclists, and pedestrians to cross paths somewhat randomly. A consistent but flexible palette of signs, canvas awnings, and timber bollards recalls the island’s nautical and industrial history. Utility lines are hidden inside bold, color-coded metal piping that zigzags overhead from block to block.

Granville Island’s broad range of activities is intended to provide a complementary mix that does not detract from existing submarkets elsewhere in Vancouver. In addition to 50 tenants and 30 day vendors in the Public Market, about 200 are located elsewhere along the island’s cul-de-sac streets. A thriving maritime facility, numerous restaurants and eateries, child-centered shopping and play areas, a smattering of houseboats, and six performance venues are packed onto the island’s 34 acres (13.75 ha). Emily Carr University of Art and Design, enrolling 1,800 students, has functioned for decades as a second anchor and as a cultural and educational complement to the Public Market.

The main pedestrian entrance to the island, located under the Granville Bridge. (DIALOG)

A key policy and leasing strategy is to forbid franchised retailers: there are no Big Macs on Granville Island. The island has also maintained a balance between profitable retail operations and cross-subsidized arts and cultural activities—what Granville Island Trust chair Dale McClanaghan has dubbed the “Robin Hood” approach to leasing.

But concerns about the island’s future are growing. The most immediate issue is marketing the Emily Carr University property; the university announced last year it would move to nearby Great Northern Way, having outgrown the island site.

Some observers believe that the federal agency managing Granville Island, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), has lowered the standards of design oversight in recent years and that CMHC may not be taking adequate precautions to exclude undesirable commercial tenants, such as a souvenir clothing shop and a psychic studio. McClanaghan wants the Granville Island Trust to reassert its original role governing vision and policy within the context of an improved financial framework to develop as-yet-unused tenant space.

Hotson and McClanaghan agree that Granville Island may be at a turning point in its evolution. Though the island is listed among 60 of the World’s Great Places by the Project for Public Spaces, issues of the island’s vulnerability continue to surface. The challenge now is whether a long-discussed return of local leadership to the Granville Island Trust can help reinvigorate the island without sacrificing allegiance to its founding principles.

Martin Zimmerman directs the Green Mobility Planning Studio USA—a firm with expertise in smart growth, urban place making, and multimodal transportation—from Charlotte, North Carolina. When in Vancouver, he bikes to Granville Island.

]]>http://urbanland.uli.org/planning-design/keeping-an-urban-authenticity-alive-vancouvers-granville-island/feed/2In Print: The Rules That Shape Urban Form http://urbanland.uli.org/planning-design/in-print-the-rules-that-shape-urban-form/
http://urbanland.uli.org/planning-design/in-print-the-rules-that-shape-urban-form/#commentsTue, 07 Jan 2014 15:09:16 +0000http://urbanland.uli.org/?p=24092This report on the tedious but highly relevant topic of zoning trends is primarily the product of lead author Donald Elliott, a nationally recognized planner and attorney. Elliott’s previous publications include two highly readable books, A Better Way to Zone and The Citizen’s Guide to Planning.

Little doubt exists that zoning regulations in the United States have had an enormous impact on the growth, development, and physical form of American cities. There is also little quarrel among professional planners and sophisticated development interests that the innovation movement of the past few decades, commonly referred to as “form-based zoning,” has been a powerful force for change. The conventional Euclidean approach dates back almost a century and is fundamentally grounded in the separation of land uses and building types. By contrast, form-based zoning has resurrected the lost values of the urban streetscapes, architectural scale, compact development, and mixed uses.

The Rules That Shape Urban Form, a report on the tedious but highly relevant topic of zoning trends, is primarily the product of lead author Donald Elliott, a nationally recognized planner and attorney. Elliott’s previous publications include two highly readable books, A Better Way to Zone and The Citizen’s Guide to Planning.

The thrust of this concise report is twofold and considerably more specific than the title implies. It analyzes six recently enacted form-based codes (FBCs) to demonstrate their varying levels of sophistication in both concept and implementation. However, given such a small sample, the judicious perspective of the authors, and the impact of the most recent recession, only tentative conclusions are reached.

With the exception of Miami, none of the examples has actually replaced existing citywide Euclidean coding. The other five applications are in Austin, Texas; Mooresville, North Carolina; Denver, Colorado; Arlington County, Virginia; and Livermore, California. For each, a short history of community dynamics, often fraught with controversy, traces the period leading up to code adoption and provides a similar accounting of how the code or ordinance has been implemented.

In Austin, for example, rather than rewrite the existing code, city staff designed a freestanding ordinance that was adopted in 2006. This option had the practical advantage of avoiding a rewrite of a complicated existing code while allowing for a more user-friendly document. Officials wanted a new ordinance to tailor required site and building design to the context of different roadway types, ranging from core transit corridors to suburban roadways. The ordinance includes mandatory standards to make sure that building frontages and sidewalks reinforce the streets as a public realm. On-street parking in some cases is counted toward minimum off-street requirements.

On a much smaller scale, Mooresville, with a population of 35,000, passed a zoning ordinance in 2008 with the objective of ensuring architectural unity for most types of development, including single-family residential. From a design standpoint, the ordinance has most of the bells and whistles of a model FBC, while at the same time it includes the Euclidean reliance on buildings categorized by their use. Mooresville typifies the merging of form-based and Euclidean models—what Elliot calls a “hybrid code.”

Miami stands out as the only major U.S. city to discard the conventional Euclidean code and substitute a set of regulations derived from the “transect” or “smart code” model. The process leading to the passage of the Miami 21 form-based zoning code in October 2009 was elaborate, exhaustive, and highly contentious, lasting four years and involving more than 500 public meetings.

The Rules That Shape Urban Form also analyzes the extent to which FBCs are addressing a much larger set of planning considerations—historic preservation, housing affordability, aging populations, and carbon emissions and climate change. The results in these six cities are mixed. FBCs in some cases appear to have no clear advantage over conventional zoning. Say Elliott and his team, “[We] are still only beginning to develop a range of new tools designed specifically to control urban form, especially when high-quality, walkable urbanism is the goal.”

To the authors’ credit, great effort appears to have been directed toward making The Rules That Shape Urban Form accessible to an audience not well versed in code procedures and process. Nev­­ertheless, the inherent complexity of the subject matter presents an almost insurmountable barrier to anyone lacking grounding in code work. But for those who are knowledgeable, especially if they harbor hopes for more constructive reforms in the future, this report is a valuable and timely publication.

Martin Zimmerman writes for Urban Land on transportation mobility, development, and smart growth from Charlotte, North Carolina.

]]>http://urbanland.uli.org/planning-design/in-print-the-rules-that-shape-urban-form/feed/0In Print: Made for Walking: Density and Neighborhood Formhttp://urbanland.uli.org/infrastructure-transit/in-print-i-made-for-walking-density-and-neighborhood-form-i/
http://urbanland.uli.org/infrastructure-transit/in-print-i-made-for-walking-density-and-neighborhood-form-i/#commentsTue, 25 Jun 2013 10:41:00 +0000http://urbanland.uli.org/news/in-print-i-made-for-walking-density-and-neighborhood-form-i/In her new book, urban designer Julie Campoli judiciously weaves photography, text, and mapping to define the essential characteristics of 12 compact, low-carbon prototypes in central city locations. Made for Walking: Density and Neighborhood Form communicates with ease on several levels for the benefit of a broad reading audience.

It is not just a question of whether one can walk these neighborhoods—it is whether one wants to. Here, urban designer Julie Campoli judiciously weaves photography, text, and mapping to define the essential characteristics of 12 compact, low-carbon prototypes in central city locations. Her final selection, gleaned from field trips to 34 cities in Canada and the United States, is a coherent and a visually stunning product. Made for Walking: Density and Neighborhood Form communicates with ease on several levels for the benefit of a broad reading audience.

This book is saturated with images, offering more than 450. Most stunning are the multiblock elevations where the consistent alignment of facades defines the streetscape as a public realm. To achieve the desired effect, the author shot images at 20-foot (6 m) intervals and then combined them with the aid of Photoshop into seamless montages. The montages are complemented by photo vignettes that range from community gardens to intermodal transit hubs. Together, the images and vignettes bring focus to both human and architectural scales.

Mini-chapters explain the components of each neighborhood: LoDo and the Central Platte Valley in Denver; Short North in Columbus, Ohio; Kitsilano in Vancouver, British Columbia; Flamingo Park in Miami Beach, Florida; Little Portugal in Toronto; Eisenhower East in Alexandria, Virginia; the Pearl District in Portland, Oregon; Greenpoint in Brooklyn, New York; Little Italy in San Diego; Cambridgeport in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Old Pasadena, California; and downtown and Raynolds Addition in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The Pearl District and Eisenhower East are the result of recent, developer-driven efforts on brownfield sites, while other neighborhoods, such as Greenpoint and Little Portugal, appear to date back at least a century. Moreover, it comes as no surprise that these center-city examples have undergone extensive changes in resident mix because of the prevailing market shift from blue-collar to white-collar inhabitants.

These neighborhoods are virtually identical in size—125 acres (51 ha). This corresponds to a leisurely walk of about 20 minutes and serves as the benchmark for analytical comparisons in the diagrammatic maps digitally generated by the author.

These maps compare population in persons per square mile (ppsm), housing densities for each block expressed in units per acre, quantity and configuration of city blocks, access to transit and neighborhood services, extent of street trees and parklands, WalkScore ratings, and other factors. Building densities on a block-by-block basis are generally very tight—a characteristic made possible in part because off-street surface parking lots are rare—block sizes are generally small, and lot-by-lot construction is not subjected to onerous setback requirements.

A 13th prototype discussed in de­­tail is Dockside Green, a refreshing reinterpretation of garden city motifs. Designed by Busby Perkins + Will, it is located on vacant industrial land across the harbor from downtown Victoria, British Columbia. By combining 100 percent of the wastewater treatment located on site, energy consumption that is 45 to 55 percent less than the Canadian Model National Energy Code, and other state-of-the-art environmental benefits, Dockside Green has been certified Platinum under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system by the U.S. Green Building Council.As primarily a residential community, however, Dockside Green lacks the diversity shown in the other prototypes.

Jane Jacobs said in 1963 that “dwelling densities should go as high as they need to go to stimulate the maximum potential diversity of a district. . . . Densities can get too high if they reach a point at which, for any reason, they begin to repress diversity instead of to stimulate it.” Campoli’s concern is at the lower end of density—namely, the minimum population density that “makes public transportation viable and services available” (i.e., readily accessible without auto dependency). To make this happen on a metropolitan level, she sets a baseline of approximating eight dwelling units per gross acre; at 1.3 persons per unit, this equates to 7,000 people per square mile. She reminds readers that this is still “more than twice the density of most American cities.”But at the neighborhood level, achieving the robust mix highlighted in this book implies densities beginning at 11 dwellings per acre or 10,000 ppsm.The challenge of reforming prevailing low-density development patterns—even at Campoli’s thresholds—continues to be most daunting.

An abundance of books champion the cause of compact form. But one is hard-pressed to ferret out a better effort at distilling its essentials than Made for Walking.

Why are citywide transportation systems in the United States not responding to larger social, economic, and sustainability needs? What is wrong with existing methods of transportation modeling and forecasting? When is congestion really a good sign, and when is it objectionable? How critical are land use density and intensity to the success of mass transit? These are some of the many questions raised in this ambitious but flawed attempt to compress a vast array of transportation thought into an abbreviated primer.

Jeffrey Tumlin is one of many land planners whose careers have intersected with the prevailing engineering culture. His book Sustainable Transportation Planning attempts to grasp in shorthand form the big picture—one that integrates motor vehicles with bicycling, transit, parking, car sharing, transit-oriented design of stations, and other considerations. Helpful tidbits on design, programming, and modeling can be gleaned from this volume. Comparisons ranking the relative merits of transit modes, optimal lane widths in “complete streets” scenarios, even the dimensions and placement of bike paths or cycle tracks can be found in an abbreviated format.

The most successful sections get to the core of transportation planning: performance measurements, modeling, transit demand management, and traffic congestion management.

Despite such strengths, Sustainable Transportation Planning fails to weave its numerous themes into a seamless whole. The final product is riddled by more than its share of omissions, inconsistency, oversimplification, and inaccuracy. Basics, such as a glossary of essential terms—LOS (level of service), TDM (transportation demand management), TOD (transit-oriented design), or BRT (bus rapid transit)—are nowhere to be found. Maps, charts, and photos are essential for any primer on design and planning, but in this volume, tiny single-color site plans and maps are difficult, if not impossible, to decipher. Discerning readers deserve much more.

]]>http://urbanland.uli.org/infrastructure-transit/in-print-i-sustainable-transportation-planning-i/feed/0In Print: The Great Inversion and the Future of the American Cityhttp://urbanland.uli.org/economy-markets-trends/in-print-i-the-great-inversion-and-the-future-of-the-american-city-i/
http://urbanland.uli.org/economy-markets-trends/in-print-i-the-great-inversion-and-the-future-of-the-american-city-i/#commentsWed, 27 Feb 2013 15:45:00 +0000http://urbanland.uli.org/news/in-print-i-the-great-inversion-and-the-future-of-the-american-city-i/This remarkably perceptive book, written by Alan Ehrenhalt, a former executive editor of Governing magazine, not only validates a grand diagram that has been reshaping and re­­arranging metropolitan areas from downtowns to the exurbs, but it successfully delivers the reader to an unfolding real-life scenography.

]]>The Great Inversion and the Future of the American CityAlan EhrenhaltKnopf 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019; www.knopfdoubleday.com. 2012. 288 pages. $14.95 paperback.

This remarkably perceptive book not only validates a grand diagram that has been reshaping and re­­arranging metropolitan areas from downtowns to the exurbs, but it successfully delivers the reader to an unfolding real-life scenography. Gaining even greater velocity over the last decade, and to the consternation of the experts, this reshaping process can now be seen in the most unlikely locations. Journalist Alan Ehrenhalt, a former executive editor of Governing magazine, has come up with a compelling name—”the great inversion”—and he casts about from neighborhood to neighborhood in a probing critique that covers about 20 locales. He peppers the text with numerous but cautious insights that strike a delicate balance between what he sees happening on the ground, what his finely tuned instincts tell him, and what the latest census data indicate.

Reversing the pattern of the decades following World War II, when the move was up and out of the city, the move now is decidedly back toward the center. Here is where an ever-increasing cohort of retirees, hipsters, milennials, and others are choosing to reside. These arrivals are determined to cope with the escalating price of housing as long as they can have a lifestyle that at least approximates a semblanceof Jane Jacobs’s urbanity.

Meanwhile, the metropolitan periphery is increasingly the place where members of the working class—in particular, the large cohort of newly arrived immigrants—are staking their turf. In 1970, most of the foreign-born were still settling in cities; by 2005, however, the trend had reversed, with an estimated 4.4 million going to the suburbs versus only 2.9 million going to the center. Gwinnett County, Georgia, located almost 20 miles outside Atlanta, had virtually no immigrant residents in 1990. Now, it not only has exploded in size, but it has also become a mix of nonwhite nationalities. This is where 31 percent of all Indian immigrants in the state of Georgia reside, for example.

The author correctly perceives, in places closer to central cities, like the Woodlands and Sugar Land outside of Houston, or Stapleton and Belmar near Denver, a newer brand of mixed-use town centers as strands within the grand diagram, implying that many suburbanites are seeking at least a sense of faux urbanity, even if it lacks connectivity to transit and leans toward a much bigger-box version of Greenwich Village than one might have wished.

There are many surprise neighborhoods featured in this book— Bushwick in eastern Brooklyn, New York; Sheffield in northwest Chicago; the Third Ward and the Fourth Ward in Houston; and Cleveland Heights, Ohio, to name a few. Some are faring very well and others are fraught with complications. But perhaps the most startling is in lower Manhattan, near Wall Street. The 1970 census indicated a mere 833 residents living there, mostly in single-room-occupancy apartments. In 2010, conservative estimates put the population at 50,000—an increase of 35,000 since the September 11 attacks.

So much is unpredictable, cautions the author. What will gasoline prices be in 2020? Even if they do not rise much more, will that really matter if commutes become an even bigger nightmare? Will the newly formed suburbs of the late 20th century turn into the slums of 2030? Will iPhones and social media supplant face-to-face contact on the sidewalk or at the grocery store?

In capturing the forward thrust of how the American metropolis continues to reshape itself, Ehrenhalt’s balanced account is unsurpassed by many similar attempts of the past year, and it deserves a place at the top of one’s reading list.

]]>http://urbanland.uli.org/economy-markets-trends/in-print-i-the-great-inversion-and-the-future-of-the-american-city-i/feed/0In Print: Instant City: Life and Death in Karachihttp://urbanland.uli.org/economy-markets-trends/in-print-i-instant-city-life-and-death-in-karachi-i/
http://urbanland.uli.org/economy-markets-trends/in-print-i-instant-city-life-and-death-in-karachi-i/#commentsWed, 20 Feb 2013 15:51:00 +0000http://urbanland.uli.org/news/in-print-i-instant-city-life-and-death-in-karachi-i/Authored by the cohost of National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, Steve Inskeep, this story is an account of his firsthand experience reporting on the daily tremors in modern-day Karachi.

The story of modern-day Karachi, the largest city in Pakistan and the seaport gateway to Central Asia, is a traumatic tale of high expectations, grand plans, and acts of admirable sacrifice and humanitarianism torn asunder by greed and corruption, land mafias, political upheaval, religious factionalism, and government incompetence. It is a familiar saga common to the emerging urban Third World of swelling supercity immigrant populations fleeing the crushing misery of the countryside. Authored by the cohost of National Public Radio’s Morning Edition,Steve Inskeep, the text is an account ofhis firsthand experience reporting on the daily tremors in one of the world’s fastest-growing megacities numbering well over 13 million residents—a population 33 times greater than it was in 1947, the year of Pakistan’s founding.

The dismal failure of Korangi, a huge new suburb planned for 500,000 residents in the late 1950s and envisioned by famed Greek city planner Constantinos Doxiadis, is one of many examples Inskeep reveals that track the downward spiral from noble intention to tragic outcome. Early on, Doxiadis became aware of the ominous risks posed by the Korangi assignment. The remote site chosen by the government would make it impossible for residents to commute to jobs, and meager per-capita incomes called into question whether new residents could afford to participate in the government-subsidized rent-to-own housing program. A worst-case scenario ensued within a few years as new residents chose to piece together unauthorized shacks wherever they could grab a sliver of land. “Nobody was interested in keeping up with the project,” according to a postmortem; city government “does not have the capacity to do anything.”

Nawaz Khan, an ethnic Pashtun immigrant, fits the profile of who the key Karachi players really are and how they effect positive trade to finance housing change, however marginal. In the chapter titled “Self-service Levittown,” Khan outperforms Doxiadis by using his meager earnings in the fabric smuggling trade to finance housing for the poor. Starting with a few hundred Afghan nomad families building on his squatter site, his business grows as, unbeknownst to government authorities, he hustles up more plots of public land. As his success continues, Khan seizes an opportunity for support by joining the popular Pakistan People’s Party—a move that lends crucial political cover to his land-grabbing enterprise.

Perween Rahman, in an interview with Inskeep, puts the workings of people like Khan into perspective. Rahman directs the Orangi Pilot Project-Research and Training Institute, named after a section of northwest Karachi sometimes referred to as “Asia’s largest slum.” She notes with a mix of sympathy and ambivalence that Kahn and the grass-roots forces he represents constitute “a new form of alternative government” in which “land suppliers” provide water, electricity, roads, and even sewage systems. But there is more at stake. Water piped in from the Indus River is stolen by tanker trucks and sold to squatters at premium prices, and parts of Karachi are flooded regularly by monsoon rains—the flooding. A tragic consequence of illegal development within the very marshlands that are intended to serve as holding zones for storm drains or sewage discharge.

If the tenacious will to overcome inordinate odds represents the “life” of Karachi, its ongoing religious and political factionalism is a hallmark of its “death.” Despite the efforts of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan’s founding statesman and a Karachi resident, to preserve the rights of religious minoritiesin a Muslim nation, the newly dominant Muslims, writes Inskeep, “found divisions among themselves . . . divided by ethnicity, language, class, and Muslim sect . . . and with catastrophic consequences.” Karachi has been wracked by riots, bombings, and arson on a continuous basis for decades.

Inskeep’s focus is not always as clear as it should be, and the reader is never quite sure how much hope he really harbors for Karachi. His moribund writing style, save for a few select passages, fails to capture the hyperbolic tensions inherent in his subject matter. Karachi continues to grow at an alarming rate, Inskeep says. It is a “destination of pilgrims and home of the poor, a field of operations for the makers of buildings and bombs … battering people with the impartiality of a typhoon.”

]]>http://urbanland.uli.org/economy-markets-trends/in-print-i-instant-city-life-and-death-in-karachi-i/feed/0Around the World on Two Wheelshttp://urbanland.uli.org/sustainability/around-the-world-on-two-wheels/
http://urbanland.uli.org/sustainability/around-the-world-on-two-wheels/#commentsWed, 12 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000http://urbanland.uli.org/news/around-the-world-on-two-wheels/Bike sharing in the United States may not yet be as popular as in Europe or China, but two-wheelers are making tracks in high-cost cities.

With catchy brand names that often provide clues to their locales—Capital Bikeshare, DecoBike, Vélib’, Cabi, Barclays Cycle Hire, Dublin Bikes, Ecobici, Hangzou Public Bikes, or Yellow Bike Sushou—bike-sharing systems have been gaining traction as a true global transportation phenomenon. With origins dating to the oil embargo of the 1970s, bike sharing only in the past decade has seen its reach extend beyond western Europe.

In 2002, bike sharing was limited to five European countries: Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, and Portugal. The total number of bikes hovered at 4,000, about half of which were within the city limits of Copenhagen. By early 2011, growth had soared to 236,000 bicycles in 33 countries, according to the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development. Though Europe still claims 90 percent of city fleets, its share of total bikes in use has dropped to about 50 percent.

Bike-sharing systems have distinct competitive advantages over cars in expensive, high-density cities like Paris, where the hassle of owning, insuring, parking, and fueling a vehicle is daunting. Bike sharing also fills the first-mile/last-mile gap by linking transit stops to final destinations that otherwise might be too distant to walk to or not feasible to reach by car.

“This is not simply another way to bike, but rather a 21st-century form of public transportation,” says Eric Britton, an American-born economist and transportation analyst living in Paris. “Think of them as tiny transit vehicles. With the flick of a credit card or the tap of an iPhone, you can pick up a bike where you want, when you want, cycle to within a block or so of your final destination, and then lock it securely to a docking station.”

In addition to being available at rock-bottom rates, bicycles are a mode of choice if users want to claim a small carbon footprint, capture a chunk of urban streetscape from motorized four-wheeled rivals, or simply experience the pleasure of casually pedaling along roadside bike lanes, off-road cycle tracks, or parkways.

The Vélib’ system in Paris was a pioneer in bike sharing (though a Chinese city, Hangzhou, claims to have the largest fleet—Hangzhou Public Bicycle with 60,000 bicycles). In central Paris, one rarely needs to go farther than a few blocks to locate a credit card station with 30 or 40 bicycle docks. Daily use runs as high as 120,000 riders, and 20,600 bikes are available at more than 1,400 stations. Both Paris and France’s second-largest city, Lyon, count an impressive 10 percent of the resident population as paid subscribers to their bike-share systems.

These systems can also be found in smaller European cities. In Austria, where 84 bike-sharing systems operate, locations vary from the tourist-­oriented Nextbike-Burgenland fleet, which operates in nine towns surrounding a national park, to hamlets that can get by with only one bicycle terminal at the railroad station.

The distinct advantages of state-of-the-art, third-generation systems lie in their details. Most previous systems relied on coin deposits, but credit card payments, smartphone apps, and user-friendly kiosks make renting a bike no more complicated than using an ATM. Whereas second-generation systems had fixed docking stations taking as long as six months to install, third-generation stations are solar powered, allowing docks to be relocated overnight by mobile crews to meet constantly changing demand. Fees are typically charged for 24-hour, weekly, or monthly use, or paid in annual subscriptions. But the greatest percentage of use is at the free rate—under 30 minutes—which is enough time for one or two quick trips. This implies that docks must be closely spaced to be effective.

Users can take bikes for short spins without charge, or buy a long-term subscription and gain access through the swipe of a card such as that used by Vélov

Twenty-six third-generation systems can be found in North American cities large and small, and scores more are in the planning stage. Portions of the largest system—New York City’s Citi Bike, with 10,000 bikes at 600 stations—were launched during the same week in July as the system in Charlotte, North Carolina, B-Cycle, with 200 bikes and 20 stations. The locations of other city fleets range from Montreal to Des Moines, Iowa. In Washington, D.C., and its northern Virginia suburb Arlington, Capital Bikeshare offers more than 165 stations and a fleet surpassing 1,500 bikes. Second-year counts released in 2011 reflected a surprisingly high 18,000 annual members and 1 million trips, far exceeding original 2010 projections of 8,000 members and 500,000 trips. As was the case with Vélib’, an early surge and the attendant positive publicity has fundamentally altered the D.C. public’s perception of bicycling, taking it from a fringe activity to a mainstream one.

Capital Bikeshare’s success can be attributed to many factors. Seed money came relatively quickly. As in Paris, high residential and work densities, mixed-use land development, and a heavily used subway and bus system laid a framework supportive of bicycling. Both cities, which learned from difficulties they experienced with earlier attempts, have large numbers of cosmopolitan, affluent, eco-conscious users—as well as hordes of tourists and ­conventioneers—attracted to bike sharing. Sophisticated public relations and promotional efforts have also been crucial ingredients of Capital Bikeshare’s success.

Hangzhou, China, claims the largest fleet of shared bikes.

Not to be overlooked is the impression conveyed to passersby upon discovering a gleaming red two-wheeled platoon poised for service along many of the broad D.C. avenues laid out by Pierre L’Enfant. Theft in D.C is discouraged by bicycle design: the bikes have no exposed fasteners and cannot be disassembled with conventional tools. And users have a mighty incentive to return their rented wheels: each time a bike is rented, a credit card advance payment of several hundred dollars is held in escrow until the bike is returned to the dock.

Although 2.2 percent of D.C. residents biked to work in 2009, bicycle commutes in most cities rarely exceed 1 percent of the total number of trips per day. Will American commuters soon step away from their cars and warm to the shared travel modes of Paris, Lyon, or Barcelona? They may, but in smaller numbers.

In the United States, other than the largest, most dense, and transit-diverse cities, bicycling is subject to an ­automobile-centric culture that makes it unsafe in both real and perceived terms. High-quality design solutions, such as the urban cycle tracks commonplace in Europe, are practically nonexistent, as is basic training in elements of proper and legal street etiquette for all road and sidewalk users.

Washington, D.C.’s, Capital Bikeshare is popular with tourists and commuters.

A comprehensive, sustained strategy that recalibrates all traffic modes is needed. The streetscape itself needs to be ­reinvigorated, especially in newer suburban contexts, as a place-making resource—an initiative that could take a decade or longer to achieve, even if pursued full throttle. Nevertheless, bike-sharing systems have their merits in the short term, especially as pilot projects or public relations efforts to build public confidence in bicycling for its ecofriendly and health-promoting benefits.

The European experience has demonstrated that real success is best measured in the travel choices people make. Scenarios to change an automobile-centered culture imply dramatically higher levels of long-term investment in all forms of public transportation. Disincentives designed to radically restrict free parking for the private auto, coupled with creative promotional campaigns targeted to shift transportation behavior away from auto dependency, are necessary—and are already in place in a few U.S. cities via innovative transportation demand programs. It is within such a comprehensive, long-term framework that bike sharing can ultimately fulfill the role it deserves.

]]>http://urbanland.uli.org/sustainability/around-the-world-on-two-wheels/feed/0In Print: The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New Worldhttp://urbanland.uli.org/sustainability/in-print-the-great-disruption-why-the-climate-crisis-will-bring-the-end-of-shopping-and-the-birth-of-a-new-world/
http://urbanland.uli.org/sustainability/in-print-the-great-disruption-why-the-climate-crisis-will-bring-the-end-of-shopping-and-the-birth-of-a-new-world/#commentsFri, 01 Jun 2012 15:38:00 +0000http://urbanland.uli.org/news/in-print-the-great-disruption-why-the-climate-crisis-will-bring-the-end-of-shopping-and-the-birth-of-a-new-world/Paul Gilding, former director of Greenpeace International and currently an environmental consultant based in his home country, Australia, has been at the forefront of global environmental activism for more than four decades. Gilding’s intel­lectual foundation rests largely on such seminal findings as those in the 1972 book Limits to Growth: A Report to the Club of Rome, which is generally heralded as the most scientifically rigorous environmental treatise of its era.

Paul Gilding, former director of Greenpeace International and currently an environmental consultant based in his home country, Australia, has been at the forefront of global environmental activism for more than four decades. Gilding’s intel­lectual foundation rests largely on such seminal findings as those in the 1972 book Limits to Growth: A Report to the Club of Rome, which is generally heralded as the most scientifically rigorous environmental treatise of its era.

Limits to Growth proposed a recalibration of the status of the human and natural condition—and a dismal assessment at that. Countless books, articles, speeches, and conference proceedings, as well as much political agitation, have since taken place, leading to debate, discussion, and ultimately to a reshaping of popular thinking in response to the report’s ironic proposition: that in the context of the modern era, conquering nature can only lead to the defeat of nature and the human race.

proposed a recalibration of the status of the human and natural condition—and a dismal assessment at that. Countless books, articles, speeches, and conference proceedings, as well as much political agitation, have since taken place, leading to debate, discussion, and ultimately to a reshaping of popular thinking in response to the report’s ironic proposition: that in the context of the modern era, conquering nature can only lead to the defeat of nature the human race.

However, Limits avoided predicting just when runaway resource depletion, unchecked population expansion, and the addictive consumer machinations of modern economies would reach a cumulative breaking point. Here, Gilding makes that call and with all the conviction he can muster.

Gilding recounts the turbulent 1980s and 1990s as the “scream,” likening it to the horrific visage portrayed in Edvard Munch’s anguished painting of that name. This is when Gilding, environmental activist and author Bill McKibben, and so many other activists were labeled doomsday pariahs, hell-bent on destroying the progress and well-being of free-market economies. But their warnings are no less urgent today.

Gilding argues that the “breaking point” is already upon us, having been jump-started four years ago, earlier than anticipated. In his chapter “Global Foreshock—The Year that Growth Stopped,” Gilding outlines several worldwide cues ranging from “global markets lurching from crisis to crisis” to “melting of . . . icecaps, at rates way beyond their [scientists’] forecast models.” He warns in no uncertain terms, “This [the great disruption] is going to be what James Kunstler described in The Long Emergency—a generations-long crisis that will need to be managed with focus and determination.”

Gilding’s central theme is one of hope, but the outcomes he desires for the survival of humankind will demand unparalleled global commitments at unprecedented levels. His profoundly radical, long-term plan to emerge from impending environmental and societal catastrophe hinges on the imperative that there be no more than a one-degree increase in global temperature in the next century. This level is consistent with McKibben and the global grass-roots movement he cofounded, 350.org, and is supported by noted scientific experts. In the pivotal chapter of his book, “The One-Degree War,” Gilding details a wide array of strategies and timelines comprising his proposal for such a campaign. There is no question such efforts, if attempted, will be fraught with unprecedented sacrifice. But for Gilding, mankind has no choice but to win.

The goal for the initial five years would be to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent. Fourteen worldwide metrics would have to be met, many of them audacious. The more radical include reducing deforestation by 50 percent; closing 1,000 dirty coal plants; rationing the use of electricity; erecting wind turbines or solar plants in every jurisdiction of 1,000 or more inhabitants; rationing the use of dirty cars to cut transportation emissions by 50 percent; and cutting emissions from the world’s aircraft in half. Although years five through 20 would move the world to net-zero climate emissions, Gilding says it would require another half century of effort to “create a stable global climate and sustainable global economy.”

All this leads to the final phase of Gilding’s grand plan. He sketches the principles of a world order that would emerge as the ripe fruit of triumph. “The Great Disruption,” he writes, “will take human society to a higher evolutionary state . . . that represents our highest capacities, with extreme poverty eliminated, great technology that works with rather than against nature . . . a closed-loop, [steady-state] economy with no waste” . . . with “happiness, satisfaction and service as the central organizing principles.” Quoting Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes, and John Stuart Mill, Gilding argues that human happiness is ultimately achievable when life’s meaning and worth are no longer measured by consumer-driven indexes.

The Great Disruption should generate heated discussion in many quarters. Critics will inevitably characterize the author’s assessment and proposed solutions as outrageously simplistic and idealistic and trivialize his empirical data, despite wide concurrence in the scientific community. They will dismiss the ominous environmental warnings evident in the very air we breathe and the water we drink. They will label him naive and as having little or no comprehension of the motives that sustain civilizations.

should generate heated discussion in many quarters. Critics will inevitably characterize the author’s assessment and proposed solutions as outrageously simplistic and idealistic and trivialize his empirical data, despite wide concurrence in the scientific community. They will dismiss the ominous environmental warnings evident in the very air we breathe and the water we drink. They will label him naive and as having little or no comprehension of the motives that sustain civilizations.

Yet the Gilding revealed here is a thoughtful, exceptionally bright, and engaging communicator, despite distracting passages that read like corporate pep talks to the CEOs for which he typically consults. But the thrust of his message is as compelling as it is drastic. His is a call to immediate action on a scale never before conceived or undertaken. It is a call made not by choice, but of necessity.

]]>http://urbanland.uli.org/sustainability/in-print-the-great-disruption-why-the-climate-crisis-will-bring-the-end-of-shopping-and-the-birth-of-a-new-world/feed/0Arrival City: How the Largest Migration in History Is Reshaping Our Worldhttp://urbanland.uli.org/sustainability/arrival-city-how-the-largest-migration-in-history-is-reshaping-our-world/
http://urbanland.uli.org/sustainability/arrival-city-how-the-largest-migration-in-history-is-reshaping-our-world/#commentsWed, 12 Oct 2011 13:31:00 +0000http://urbanland.uli.org/news/arrival-city-how-the-largest-migration-in-history-is-reshaping-our-world/Veteran British journalist Doug Saunders, in his thought-provoking, painstakingly researched, and gripping book Arrival City, examines the receptor communities for those fleeing the crushing subsistence of a farm economy, which are stereotyped as dead-end zones with no prospect of change or upward mobility. Read a review of the book, and find out why Saunders believes this view of such places is wrong.

It begins on Île de la Cité and near the Hotel de Ville in the center of Paris, and out beyond the old walls in the suburb of Faubourgs. In barely a year, Paris swells by 126,000 impoverished inhabitants sleeping as many as 20 per room in suffocating slums. The year 1789 marks the beginning of a great western European and New World rural-to-urban migration and the dawn of the French and Industrial revolutions.

Then, as today, the receptor communities for those fleeing the crushing subsistence of a farm economy are stereotyped as dead-end zones of entrapment and crime, places with no prospect of change or up–ward mobility. Not so, writes veteran British journalist Doug Saunders in this thought-provoking, painstakingly researched, and gripping commentary of what he calls “arrival cities.” Such communities have been and continue to be dynamic places of transition, he asserts, playing a major role in shaping the destiny of their parent cities. Moreover, what transpires in coming decades of migration will have enormous global consequences—economic, social, and political. By the mid-21st century. human population is predicted to stabilize at 9 billion, signaling the closing chapter to all great migrations. But how it all ends is the unanswered question posed by this book.

Saunders’s research, the product of three years of globetrotting with his support team, has fostered the hope, albeit cautionary, that today’s arrival city can continue to fulfill its inherent mission as a legitimate and special kind of urban place. The text poignantly captures the dreams and fears of everyday residents in as many as 30 cities and villages in 16 countries: favelas, bustees, kampongs, gecekondulars, barrios, and banlieues difficiles, mostly clustered in or near megacities like Mumbai, Shenzhen, Istanbul, or the northern Virginia and Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C.

The disturbing reality that Saunders and his team witnessed was that life in such settlements, indeed the residents’ very hopes for survival, can change almost overnight. Sudden oscillations from shock to awe, explosion to stabilization, make it extraordinarily difficult for researchers to frame conclusive assessments. Witness Slotervaart, the Le Corbusier–inspired Cartesian settlement near Amsterdam, originally a bland grid of single-use buildings and districts built after World War II. Reality there was shattered in late 2004 when a second-generation dropout and radical Islamic, Mohammed Bouyeri, brutally murdered filmmaker Theo van Gogh, shooting him eight times and slashing his throat. Or the Santa Marta favela high above Rio de Janeiro, which in 2008 was stormed by military police who shot to death all the members of the traficantes Red Command drug army, the climax of many such raids.

Hopeful responses occurred in both settings, and in short order. In Slotervaart, despite severe political backlash, Amsterdam’s Jewish mayor Job Cohen joined forces with a local politician and immigrant Moroccan, Ahmed Marcouch, to undertake an ambitious redevelopment plan. In just three years, Slotervaart was rebuilt on the Jane Jacobs model of mixed-use intensity, diversity, and flexibility with apartments above businesses on bustling streets and sidewalks, plus larger police and security patrols and a bicycle-borne truancy force to keep teenagers in school.

At Santa Marta, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, himself a product of an arrival city, announced a series of physical changes, including a funicular rail connection, a daycare facility, a lighted football field, and street lighting. But equally if not more important was the granting of birth certificates and assignment of street addresses to all residents. Even in the face of such promising interventions, Saunders admits that these settlements are still works in progress.

The evolving situation in Poland represents an ironic twist, what observers have called a “J-turn” of arrival-city returnees. Due to a complex overlap involving failed government policy, admission to the European Union, the realities of daily economic logic, and a dose of sheer happenstance, legions of Poles who had settled as far away as London and New York City are now occupying arrival destinations, not on farms, but in Gdansk, Warsaw, and Krakow. Perhaps this is the signal of long-term success, an indicator of a growing stability and prosperity, as also found in Los Angeles, Istanbul, and London.

What concerns Saunders most is that “the larger message is lost to many citizens and leaders. These transitional spaces . . . are . . . where the next great economic and cultural boom will be born or the next explosion of violence will occur,” he writes. “The difference depends on our ability to notice and our willingness to engage.” Read, ponder, and absorb the complex and far-reaching issues posed by this book. They are of a transformative nature.